


Hai

by chronicAngel



Series: Leaves in the Summer [3]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Blood, Broken Bones, Child Death, Chuunin Exams, Fights, Gen, Original Character Death(s), POV Third Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-21
Updated: 2018-03-21
Packaged: 2019-04-05 13:14:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14045025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chronicAngel/pseuds/chronicAngel
Summary: In four days, he'll return to Konohagakure, a newly promoted chūnin, the blood of Naginata Yari, Nodachi Ken, and Wakizashi Nihontō on his hands and a third tomoe spinning in his Sharingan. He'll be the only person promoted to a chūnin from this exam, with everyone else either dead, incapacitated, or otherwise disqualified (mostly because he or someone else defeats them in a fight). Right now, he mourns two teammates he didn't think he cared about.





	Hai

He's been saying for years that they should learn to be less emotional. Should stop looking at enemies like they're somehow going to realize their wrongdoings and change sides in the middle of a battle. Should stop hesitating at the last second on a killing blow. "It's the reason we're still genin," he had sneered only a few weeks ago when Haruna had almost fainted in the middle of a mission after he'd stabbed his kunai so deeply into the enemy's neck that the very tip of the blade had come out the other side, piercing through the bone. "Hideyoshi-sensei would have recommended us for the exams months ago if you two weren't still dragging us down."

At age fourteen, he still holds himself leagues above where he holds his teammates, but he at the very least considers them acquaintances of circumstance.

"The air is so humid here, _hai_ ," Haruna complains for the dozenth time, squinting through the fog. Arata nods in agreement to the side while Fugaku pinches the bridge of his nose to avoid snapping, partially because it's really very easy to make Haruna cry and partially because it's too hard to see through the dense air in Kiri even with the aid of his Sharingan to be sure that no one is watching them. His female teammate's blonde hair, which hovers an inch off of her head with volume in their own village, hangs limply against her back and at her sides here, dragged down by the air's persistent dampness. Meanwhile, Arata wipes at his too-small forehead like he's trying to mop away sweat with his thin, stubby little fingers. He looks like he stopped growing at age seven, only coming up to even Haruna's shoulder. Fugaku is of the mind that he should never have been allowed to graduate from the Academy, but he supposes it's only technically his business.

He hears a light splashing noise before he sees the silhouettes, and he moves on instinct to protect his teammates. Haruna, intellectually, is amazing, getting even better scores on written exams than he did in the Academy, much to his annoyance, and her genjutsu is improving, but she's too sensitive and easily taken by surprise. Arata, meanwhile, inspires an irrational defensiveness in him, similar to the way he gets when his younger brother comes home scuffed up after Academy. Reizan is now the age that he was when he graduated, and though he knows the other Uchiha shoot expectant looks his way, other boys in the Academy actively bully him for it. _He's too soft, too_.

"Show yourselves. We know you're here," he yells toward the shadows, his Sharingan now picking up three clear outlines, and despite his words he feels both of his teammates tense behind him. They're all taller, maybe a few inches of height on him and at least a foot on Arata, with various sturdy-looking builds. His eyes zero in on a fat boy to one side, whose face is just as ugly as the rest of him when he steps close enough that Fugaku can make out clear features. He wears a sneer that immediately makes Fugaku want to punch him, but he settles for scowling and brushing Haruna more closely behind him while his other hand reaches for his shuriken pouch.

One merely cuts the fat boy's arm, but the other punctures his shoulder. All civility is lost, the tallest, meanest-looking boy lunging straight for them.

Fugaku blocks his kunai with ease, catching it in the notch between two sharp points on a shuriken before punching him in the gut. Up close and with his Sharingan pointed straight at the boy's face when he doubles over, he recognizes him from the first round of the exams as a Kiri nin named Wakizashi Nihontō. He'd been picking on Arata for his height when Fugaku arrived in the exam room, determined not to show up with his team if only so people didn't _overestimate_ those two.

He has to choose, quickly, between dodging the shuriken whizzing through the air toward his head from the fat boy (Nodachi Ken)'s shoulder, or using one of his own weapons to block a blow from the third boy (Naginata Yari) aimed for Haruna's arm. It's a surprisingly difficult choice, but he quickly dives out of the way of the shuriken.

Haruna's agonized scream rips through the humidity and forces all air from his lungs with vicious efficiency, a wail that pierces the fog and surely alerts the entire world to their location, if not just all the other genin looking for a flag.

He'd thought at the beginning of this round that it'd be easy. It had been announced that morning that it would be a sort of game of capture the flag, with only half of the teams being given one, and he'd quickly decided that he would track down a team with a flag with his Sharingan and take it from them through any means necessary, Arata and Haruna's complaints be damned.

But Kirigakure doesn't have teams.

Their genin graduation exams are legendary, and he knows that only one makes it out a year. Making friends in Academy in Kiri is ill-advised, and he's met many people back home in Konoha who are immigrants from the Land of Water, young shinobi families too horrified at the thought of putting their child through the Academy there.

"Shut up," Yari yells in response, smacking a hand over her mouth at the same time that Nihontō kicks the backs of Arata's knees until he collapses onto the ground in front of them, Ken pulling up the back with a hand clutching his bleeding arm.

"Get up, both of you," Fugaku scolds, raising his voice enough to be heard over Haruna's pained wails. He glances over his shoulder at his teammates for only an instant, but his Sharingan burns the sight that greets him into his mind. Tears run down Haruna's cheeks, but it's the blood that pours from her arm that really captured his attention. It's been cut at the elbow, and he could see the bone and joint peeking through the cracks between her fingers where she clutches at the wound as though cupping her injury will make it stop bleeding, warn red seeping between the insignificant gaps and coating her fingers. Arata, meanwhile, is sniveling on the ground, face down in the moist dirt as Nihontō raises a foot to stomp down upon his back. There's a smudge of mud on his yellow shirt that implies he's already done it once. "Now!"

To her credit, Haruna tries to stand. Arata continues to lay uselessly on the ground, which Fugaku imagines has to do with the cruel crunch of what are most likely his ribs under Nihontō's thick, well-made boots, but she weakly grasps Fugaku's shaking hand to pull herself up and he tries feebly to ignore the slickness of her fingers. She stumbles halfway between standing and a crouch, one of her knees buckling as she lets out a sharp hiss of agony, and she falls against his shoulder with a pained keen. He doesn't look away from Ken as he helps her to straighten, hearing the clinking of her kunai together in her pouch rather than seeing her retrieve one. He thinks, somewhere toward the back of his mind, that it was her dominant arm that was injured, but is too pleased (and, honestly, relieved) that he won't be the only one defending them for once.

He turns to address Nihontō and Ken, the former of which has discarded his plaything to instead return his eyes to Fugaku, gaze sliding between him and his female teammate for a moment to tell who has the flag. The blue fabric, which they managed to steal from an incompetent team of Grass shinobi, is tied around Haruna's leg, but the Kiri boys seem to have determined that they won't be able to get it while Fugaku is still here to serve as a wall. Not particularly because he cares about his teammates (he isn't as protective of them as he knows other Uchiha get) but because he absolutely refuses to lose.

He has already determined Yari to be the weakest on their team and noticed with little joy that he does not carry shuriken or kunai, but does have a poorly-concealed spear on his back and Fugaku wonders, for a second, if he even knows how to use it. He pulls it off of his back and twirls it in a way that is clearly to show off, as even Fugaku can catch it in his peripheral when his back is completely turned to the boy.

He and Haruna spring off of each other, him to provide her with additional support and her because she absolutely needs it, and he immediately slashes for Nihontō's face, recognizing him as the ringleader of the group. They aren't a team, so they wouldn't have an official jōnin instructor like Hideyoshi-sensei, which means that they serve more as a gang, with one boy recognized as stronger and thus the clear head of the team. _I'm going to take great joy in showing them how_ weak _he really is_.

The kunai in his hand digs into Nihontō's shoulder, but the boy, unlike his fat teammate, hardly seems to take notice of the injury, his lips pulling back in a vaguely threatening expression and his hand curling into a fist around his own kunai, which he swings around startlingly close to Fugaku's spine. "Fuck you," the boy spits.

"How terrifying," he sneers back, his own expression arranging itself into an angry snarl. Their kunai clang as they both block a hit from the other, and then Fugaku is forced to whirl at a 90 degree angle to dodge a swipe at his side from Ken. The two of them don't move with fluidity, Ken's moves jerky and almost hesitant, Nihontō's moves stinking with arrogance, an overconfidence in his own abilities that even Fugaku doesn't have, but they successfully drive him back-to-back with Haruna again.

"They're good," she pants, clutching once more at her arm as they both duck an attack from Yari aimed for her face.

"Hm."

"What do we do?" She asks, throwing a look at him over her shoulder.

It occurs to him then, for the first time, that she's really looking to him for answers. He's always considered himself a sort of leader for their team, the only one really competent enough to do it, but this is the only occasion where he's thought they might view him that way, too. He's always assumed his leadership was self-imposed.

He almost admits, begrudgingly, that he doesn't know. That he's never been in a fight this serious because he's still a genin (because she and Arata have been dragging him down) and they seem like they should already be at chūnin level. That for once, he's sure he's met someone nearly as good at him, maybe, _possibly_ even better. But he looks at his teammate, really _looks_ at her for the first time since they were assigned to a genin squad together and he had looked over her to assess her worth and determined that, just like Arata, who is crumpled on his stomach to the side, probably dead, she was useless. She looks so afraid, and in her wide eyes is an expression that's so dangerously close to hope that he doesn't want to risk killing it. "...We need to get them together. They're cornering us and separating us right now and that's to their advantage," he offers instead.

She nods with more seriousness than he's ever seen her wear and ducks another punch from Yari, which Fugaku takes to the cheekbone, catching the boy's wrist a second too late. He's had his Sharingan active for hours and it's beginning to exhaust him, which isn't going to help them win this fight at all. He pretends it's on purpose and smirks, throwing the boy toward his teammates.

Nihontō steps to the side, leaving Ken to catch him, and then comes sprinting toward them with his arms out behind his back and a kunai in each hand. Fugaku blocks one, but Haruna takes a cut across her cheek, blood immediately beading up just a couple of inches under her eye. _She's getting tired, too. Probably blood loss_.

The Kiri boys seem to realize their strategy and immediately fan out, this time with Ken going toward the edge of their line of sight and throwing kunai relentlessly that they are forced to dodge. Fugaku only gets a scratch across his chest after he'd stumbled trying not to trip over Arata's limp body (he coughs in response and Fugaku supposes he isn't dead, then), but there are two kunai lodged in Haruna's arm when he looks over to check on her after the onslaught has stopped. She foolishly pulls them out the exact way they were taught not to in Academy and lunges toward Ken with more determination than Fugaku has ever seen in her.

She makes multiple harsh, deep cuts along Ken's chest, ripping through the ugly green fabric of his shirt and forcing him to retreat back to the gang, which immediately leads to Nihontō splitting off and springing into the air, crashing to the ground with a forceful stab with his kunai that makes Fugaku and Haruna peel apart from each other and their back-to-back position. He still wields a kunai in each hand that he uses to battle Fugaku and Haruna, but the Uchiha catches that the other boy's movements aren't as effortless as they were before and smirks, swinging an unarmed fist at his ear which catches it, hard. Haruna takes this as an opportunity to lunge at him with a kunai of her own, and of course, she misses, but he takes a few steps back which gives Fugaku the advantage he needs to shove him back into the group. All of them are bleeding now, and the two groups stand across from each other, panting.

"You're pretty good," Ken allows, glaring at the pair across from him. "For Konoha genin," he adds, sneering, and Fugaku wonders if he's supposed to be offended on the part of his village. He is as prideful as the rest of its occupants, but as an Uchiha sees its flaws with full clarity, still feeling bitterness rise up when he remembers that in all Konoha's established years, it still has failed to inaugurate an Uchiha as Hokage. The young Sarutobi that sits in office now is really just insulting. Haruna doesn't take the bait either, but based on the way she shakes and leans ever-so-slightly against him, he wonders if she can even hear the other boy at all over her own dizziness.

He instead takes the opportunity to stealthily sort through the pouch at his side.

He doesn't carry medical equipment with which he can treat Haruna's injuries (and possibly even Arata's), and he knows that Haruna exhausted all of hers after their first fight with the Grass genin (Arata was useless there, too, earning cuts all across his back that Fugaku had since forgotten), but he has poison crafted by his fearsome grandmother.

"You two deaf or somethin'? Not gonna say anythin'?" Yari adds on to his calls, and it's the first time he's heard him speak clearly. _He sounds like a monkey_ , he thinks as he dips the end of a blade into the small vial of poison concealed in the bottom of his kunai pouch.

Haruna glances over at him, before smiling knowingly (and unnervingly weakly).

Without warning, Fugaku lunges forth, and it's Yari who's unfortunate enough to get caught, Fugaku burying his blade deeply in the other boy's neck the way he had the enemy on their mission weeks ago, although it doesn't jut out the side like it did last time. Haruna grimaces but doesn't react beyond that. She doesn't have time to, really, raising her arms to block a punch at her gut from Ken. Nihontō has disappeared into the fog, and Fugaku scans for him quickly as he pulls back.

Yari falls to the ground gurgling before he spots him, already reaching into his bag to dip shuriken into his grandmother's poison while he tracks the other boy's movements. Behind him, Haruna seems to be holding her own.

For the first time he can remember, all three of Fugaku's shuriken miss. He gets distracted at the last second by a pained scream from his teammate and turns immediately to see her clutching her arm, the injured one, or rather trying to clutch at it while Ken holds her elbow in his hand and squeezes, ugly, merciless smile painted across his lips. He makes the mistake of making smug eye contact with Fugaku, and at this range, a genjutsu with his Sharingan is almost infantile in difficulty. He can practically feel the red of his eyes flaring, the tomoe spinning as he weaves together an illusion of _pain_ , pours all of his anger and hatred for these boys into it, until Ken is screaming just as loudly as Haruna had when her arm had first been sliced and clutching at his own elbow.

 _It's easier to make a genjutsu of something you've seen_ , his brother had explained to him when he'd awoken his Sharingan, hardly eight years old. _Illusions are easy, but in the heat of battle they can be hard to focus on. If you can layer it with something real enough that the person will believe it, then you've got 'em_. Takane had, cruelly, put him under a genjutsu for two days after that, and he'd nearly died of dehydration before he finally broke it. It's hard for him to believe that his marriage is to be arranged this summer upon his 21st birthday.

Nihontō actually manages to get a real strike in on him whiles he's buried in thought, and he hears a gross popping nose as the kunai slides past his hipbone.

"Kill him," Fugaku hisses to Haruna before turning to face Nihontō, grabbing the last of his kunai from his pouch. He doesn't bother dipping it in poison, wanting to hear Nihontō beg and wail for mercy for _hours_. Fugaku's Sharingan catches Nihontō's quick dive to grab the kunai from Fugaku's hip and he half-dodges, half-falls to the side away from it in response. He's on one knee on the ground, biting his lip to distract himself from the pain as tears prick at the corners of his eyes, begging for release. Pain radiates in waves from his hip and he recognizes the feeling of a fast-acting poison; though not fast enough, he thinks, that it will be able to stop him from killing this Kiri _idiot_ and maybe even saving Haruna before he dies.

That train of thought abruptly falls off the rails when Haruna finally collapses behind him. He and Nihontō both scramble for their unconscious teammates, Nihontō shaking, Fugaku limping. He resolves to finish this, ominously, _later_ as he clutches Haruna's body to his chest. She's not dead, but her breathing is shallow, and he sees that there's another large gash at her side seeping blood where the pace of her arm hasn't even begun to slow down. Honestly, he's amazed she has even lasted this long, wonders for a second if she has an ancestor among the Uzumaki even as she lacks their distinguishing red hair and intense chakra.

He realizes he's crying before she does, but not very long before she does.

"Hey," she says, lifting a hand to his cheek and smiling her best smile. She's _always_ smiling and until right this second, he's hated it. He realizes that while he's refused to even entertain the thought that they may be friends, Haruna might very well be his _only_ friend. "Stop that. Don't cry, _hai_." He doesn't understand _why_. It's not _fair_.

"Don't die," he retorts, sniffing and berating himself because _Uchiha don't cry, especially not in front of stupid girls_.

"No promises," she says weakly, and the warble in her voice is suspiciously like a laugh. "Guess you really are the strongest, huh Fugaku?" She says, and it's so out of nowhere that it makes his head spin.

He shakes his head, still trying to force his eyes to quit leaking. He scrambles away from her to pull off Arata's shirt, and if he wasn't dead during their fight he certainly is now. The way his ribs jut out at awkward angles against the pale skin of his back threatens to make Fugaku sick and so he hurries back. _The dead have no need for modesty_ , he thinks as he presses the fabric into her side, staining the obnoxious yellow with deep red. Still, she's bleeding from two places and Arata was too small for his shirt to be big enough that it'll stretch over both. There are tears at the corners of her eyes, and she rests her hand on his cheek again and makes him look at her, stare her in the eyes. His Sharingan still hasn't faded to blackness and he catches the way she tries to hide ten different shades of pain. He wonders if it's always been this way.

"Will you just..." She starts, and cuts herself off with a sharp hiss as she apparently moves her bad arm the wrong way. "Will you just hold me? Until I... y'know? I'd... like to think we were friends," she says, and the explanation makes his chest hurt as he clutches her closer, as though clinging to her body will cling to her life and she won't leave. Arata's death has no impact on him, really, a lingering sadness at the edge of his awareness that he'll consider later, but having just fought alongside her, nearly died trying to protect her, he feels a deep sorrow at her loss. "There's a cure-all in my bag... Should... fight off the poison... long enough for you to get out of here and find Hideyoshi-sensei..." She mumbles into his shoulder, breaths shallow and ragged. He had forgotten about the searing pain in his own body, forgotten he was poisoned, in the face of this.

" _Stop_ ," he commands, trying to make his voice sound final. She just laughs a little, her breaths so small. His heart throbs, and he chokes on a sob. Even when he was a _child_ , he doesn't think he ever sobbed.

"We can't all die. What kind of message would it send? Plus... You have to go on to be the head of your clan." It's been his life goal, born as the second son, to surpass his brother and become head of the clan anyway. He didn't think she'd been paying enough attention to notice. He supposes he's the only one who didn't care. It only serves to make him feel worse.

"Takane's the heir. He'll be clan head."

She shakes her head fiercely. "No. You will. I just have a feeling." He swallows thickly and nods, even though he's still sure she's crazy, because what else can he really do? "Hey..." She says again, and he stares pointedly at her face. He should have spent more time looking her in the face. "When you... when you get back to the village. Tell Nana-ane congratulations for me, _hai_?" He is confused for a moment, before realizing that she must mean Nakahara Nanako, her older sister, who has just gotten married-- Hatake Nanako, by now. It really was a shame that her wedding day fell during the Chūnin Exams. Haruna had talked so emphatically about it.

He nods jerkily, and as though he has given her permission, Nakahara Haruna dies in his arms. A few feet away lies the small, already-limp body of Matsuoka Arata, who likely suffocated on his own blood after a broken rib pierced his lung. Uchiha Fugaku, the only living member of what was once Team 1, cries over a girl who a few hours ago he would have said he actively disliked. In four days, he'll return to Konohagakure, a newly promoted chūnin, the blood of Naginata Yari, Nodachi Ken, and Wakizashi Nihontō on his hands and a third tomoe spinning in his Sharingan. He'll be the only person promoted to a chūnin from this exam, with everyone else either dead, incapacitated, or otherwise disqualified (mostly because he or someone else defeats them in a fight). Right now, he mourns two teammates he didn't think he cared about.


End file.
